Actions

While Facebook had major outage, report details company's criminal investigation

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into Facebook's data sharing deals with a number of large technology companies, according to a new report in the New York Times
.

As part of the investigation, a New York grand jury has subpoenaed two well-known smartphone makers for records related to the investigation, according to the report.

The Times' report was released on Wednesday evening, while Facebook was dealing with a major outage.

Facebook had data-sharing arrangements with more than 150 companies
, according to a December report in the New York Times. The deals helped Facebook gain more users, according to the report, and its partners were able to access user data without obtaining consent. Many of the partnerships ended years ago, the Times noted, but the deals with Amazon and Apple were ongoing at the time of the story.

The grand jury inquiry was on behalf of the US attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York. When contacted by CNN Business, theEastern District did not have a comment on the case.

A Facebook spokesperson did not address the New York Times story specifically,but told CNN Business, "It has already been reported that there are ongoing federal investigations, including by the Department of Justice. As we've said before, we are cooperating with investigators and take those probes seriously. We've provided public testimony, answered questions, and pledged that we will continue to do so."

The company has been juggling a number of scandals and investigations since the Cambridge Analytica revelations nearly a year ago. Last week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company would be pivoting to privacy, focusing more on its messaging platforms and enabling more ephemeral features and encrypted chats.

Copyright 2019 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.